Canada day attacks on freedom - not so much · Saturday March 28, 2009 by colin newell
In a blog entry from 2 years ago, I wrote about illegal search and seizure during the Canada Day celebrations in Victoria B.C. Canada. I cited sections of our Charter Rights – on how the fuzz have no damn right to fish through your personal space while you are trying to, ironically, celebrate these very freedoms in our great country of Canada.
During the past 4 Canada Day celebrations, Police Officers from the surrounding communities boarded buses, set up road blocks and blocked pedestrian egress to look for open liquor. In setting up checkpoints around the downtown core, they actually restricted free movement of civilians going about their business. I actually had friends talking a bus across town and had their bags searched and their Pinot Noir confiscated. Shame!
My wife and I actually eschewed any plans to do anything on Canada Day – knowing full well that I would resist this police tyranny – and my resistance to this home-grown Nazism likely netting me a night in jail. My regular readers know all too well how I would react to some pinhead in a uniform barking orders at me to look in my ruck-sack.
So. Lucky me. The RCMP Public complaint watch dog is in agreement with me and those other awful bleeding heart liberal types.
The Commission for Public Complaints against the RCMP released the findings of their investigation yesterday after two members of the public took issue with the way police officers from across the region — in an effort led by Victoria police — searched people on Canada Day.
Officers boarded buses to look for open liquor and set up checkpoints around the downtown core, something they have been doing since 2005.
The B.C. Civil Liberties Association filed a complaint in July after a local woman, who was not carrying alcohol, and outraged at being searched three times on her way to the Canada Day celebrations – spoke up. The association said the searches violated people’s Charter rights against unreasonable search or seizure. Well, ya!
The commission agreed, saying that the searches were not authorized under the B.C. Liquor Control and Licensing Act, the Transit Act or common law police powers and therefore were unreasonable.
This change will force Victoria police to change their strategy on how they curb the drunken revelry that has come to characterize large events, said spokesman Det. Rick Anthony… so instead of being lazy cops by throwing a net over everyone… might actually considering getting off their asses and doing their jobs… legally.
I say… Bravo!
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Spring forward - Bail out - Chapter 1 · Tuesday March 24, 2009 by colin newell
Thousands upon thousands of American families are destitute – their retirement savings vaporized. Job markets in the U.S. are drying up faster than a California watershed.
And yet executives at numerous bailed out corporations are getting golden buy-outs.
And we are surprised. Why are we surprised? We live in a culture of greed. Where pecuniary success is more important that ethics, decency or honest to goodness moral behavior in a civil society.
Thing is… we do not live in a civil society. We live and die by the free market system. It is what it is. And our Western World revolves around it.
Fat cats get their bonuses because that is what the culture dictates. It is a culture of class. Of societal division. Old folks scraping for their pensions do not count for anything. The middle aged dude who has worked at the mill for 35 years does not count for anything. His pension is washed up like so much flotsam and he might end up living in his car – but the Wall street executive will not go a fortnight without his pound of chocolate.
This is reality. President Obama getting all steamed in front of some committee is not going to change anything. It’s window dressing.
One official for one of the corporations getting the golden tinkle from the U.S. government said… “We have contractual obligations to fulfill these bonus contracts…
we are legally obliged to deliver…”
Legally… Obliged
Which is another way of saying… F*ck you, we are the rich, you are the poor – get over it.
Folks. We are either on the cusp of a social revolution like nothing we have ever seen before…
or we are in for a long sleep.
Pick one. And go for it.
Colin Newell is a Victoria resident and pop culture maven. His semi-coherent rants will become somewhat more common place now that he has dug himself out from underneath a pile of dung.
My new chapter with the Island Prostate Resource Centre · Thursday March 19, 2009 by colin newell
In my 35+ years as a technical professional at a local University, I would find time in my schedule to do committee work, employee contract negotiations and mediation.
These and other volunteer positions put me in contact with a varied segment of my workplace. I found listening to people and offering creative solutions very rewarding.
Eventually, I would mentor younger leaders in this activity and move onto larger committees centered on well-being, work-life balance, including mental and physical health.
As fate would have it, my mortality came into sharper focus, at age 40-something, with some unusual blood test results: a higher than normal PSA (Prostate specific antigen) reading indicating immediate action was required. Off to a urologist, a biopsy and a bunch of research on my part! As it turned out, after numerous MRI screening sessions, more blood work, more physical examinations and – nothing was ever found. I was in the clear… for now.
It dawned on me after my clinical experience, that for every man that detects an anomaly such as this, another 5 men are blithely unaware that anything is amiss. So what’s the cure? Simple: Dialog, awareness, conversation and empathy.
Somewhere along the way, the Movember movement found me… or I found them. Movember originated in Australia and is all about medical research, education and awareness. During the month of November, participants eschew the often daily ritual of facial hair removal… growing a myriad of variants on the moustache.
I did 16+ years as a Movember team leader and, at times, a regional ambassador… a thinker… A talker… A media go-to… And ultimately, a fund raiser. Eventually I had done everything I felt I needed to do with Movember. A tip and friendly conversation with my Urologist, between the physical examinations and blood letting, led me to a Vancouver Island resource center and its executive officer Leanne.
For me, I had the broader view with Movember but I was losing sight of the big picture in my very back yard. I need to be clear, Movember does great work but I found that there were things that needed more attention, particularly the one-on-one personal touch.
The best moments of my journey thus far, on the subject of male mental and physical health, were the taps on the shoulder from younger lads (and older guys) struggling with something that made them feel alone. I was “first contact” for them. Listening to their stories and struggles — and giving them a bit of direction to the right resource or even some encouragement was life altering in many instances.
I would soon discover that the Prostate Resource Center would be the “first contact” point for hundreds of men annually. Much to my surprise, the resource center receives no base budgeted funding from anywhere but the generous pockets of sympathetic benefactors who see the benefit of front line resources.
They are the leanest of teams — and now I am finding my own place in this group — finding my voice as it were in a new chapter of my life as a servant to the community as a whole. I look forward to what awaits me with this group.
The Kona Coffee Farmer’s Little Boy That Could · Sunday March 15, 2009 by colin newell
Yes, once there has been a Kona coffee farmer in space as well. A local farmer’s son named Ellison S. Onizuka grew up to become a NASA astronaut while picking coffee cherries for his family after school. Guess he was made of the ‘right stuff’. Sadly he perished with his crew in the 1986 Challenger disaster on his second flight into space. There’s a museum dedicated to the little ‘Big Island’ boy-that-could at our Kona airport. When at our airport, take the time to stop by there; it’s really nicely done. You can’t believe what an inspiration this man has become to the local kids and how teachers and locals uphold his image and achievement. Somehow we think he was looking forward very much to having his first Kona coffee in orbit after takeoff and looking down onto the vast Pacific with his island home floating in the midst of it. Even trying to make out the green coffee fields of his parents and grand parents, early Japanese immigrants, here in Kealakekua.
Kona coffee is truly an out-of-this-world-experience, as Astronaut Suni Williams, Mission Log 2007 from the International Space Station describes:
“Opened a new beverage container so I am enjoying Kona coffee from Hawaii with cream and sugar. Hmmm. I was really surprised to see the CREAMY coffee in there. I think they [Houston] saw that nasty grimace I gave every morning choking down plain old black coffee – I’m only half a sailor…”
The NASA STANDARDS, FOOD, AND SPECIFICATIONS BOOK explains to the space traveller with detailed instructions of how to prep the perfect Kona coffee in space:
Page 447: Processing of Kona Coffee
Page 448: Processing of Kona Coffee w/Sugar
Page 449: Processing of Kona Coffee w/Artificial Sweetener & Nondairy Creamer
Therefore one should not assume that just being able to fly a space craft would make you automatically a master in making a cup of Kona coffee, right?
